by Barbara Opall-Rome
Given pledges by Syria and its Hezbollah allies of “more surprises” should Israel venture additional attacks on Syrian soil, will the Israel Air Force opt to use these front-line assets next time around?
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An Israeli Air Force F-35 Lightning II fighter plane performs at an air show in Israeli on June 29, 2017. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
TEL AVIV, Israel — As the Israeli Air Force continues to investigate the Feb. 10 loss of an F-16I to Syrian anti-aircraft fire,
experts here are privately questioning why, given the operational
circumstances that denied Israel the element of strategic surprise, it
did not opt to deploy its newest front-line fighter: the stealthy F-35I.
In early December, the Air Force declared initial operational
capability of the nine F-35s now in its possession. And from the aerial
activity reported by residents near its home base at Nevatim, southern
Israel, the aircraft are accruing significant flight time.
Yet none of the operational F-35s were part of the eight-aircraft force
package tasked with destroying an Iranian command center in central
Syria. The command center was reportedly operating the unmanned Shahed 171 drone that Israel says penetrated its airspace in the early morning of Feb. 10.
Nor were they tasked to lead the follow-on wave of strikes on 12
separate Syrian and Iranian assets in the punitive operation launched
later that day in response to the F-16I downing.
But why not?
Perhaps these costly stealth fighters are too precious to use. Or
perhaps the Israeli Air Force is not sufficiently confident in the
aircraft or its pilots’ proficiency in operating the fifth-generation
fighter.
Given pledges by Syria and its Hezbollah allies
of “more surprises” should Israel venture additional attacks on Syrian
soil, will the Israel Air Force opt to use these front-line assets next
time around?
The official answer to all these questions, according to Israel Defense
Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, is: “No comment.”
Unofficially, former Israeli Air Force officers offer a spectrum of explanations and conjecture, including:
- Anemic operational experience by the service’s F-35 pilots.
- Failure thus far to integrate required Israeli weaponry in the aircraft’s internal weapons bay.
- The need to reserve these assets for only the most strategically significant missions against a much more sophisticated array of enemy air defenses.
However, all conceded — and on condition of anonymity due to the
ongoing investigation — that the Air Force miscalculated. By failing to
anticipate the threat from saturation attacks by Syrian-based air
defenses — however antiquated those SA-5 and SA-17 missiles, which were
deployed to support the Syrian government, might have been — Israel
suffered not only the loss of its first fighter to enemy fire in 36
years, but a serious blow to its carefully crafted and well-earned aura
of invincibility.
‘A dangerous precedent’
With the acknowledged benefit of 20/20 hindsight, some in Israel are wondering where the F-35 was.
“They were sure the F-16I could easily survive the environment, as it
has done so many times before,” a retired Air Force major general told
Defense News.
Another former officer surmised that the weaponry Israel used in that
initial strike on the T-4 airfield in central Syria was not yet
integrated into the weapons bay of the F-35 stealth fighter. “If it was
determined to use our own special weapons for this particular scenario
and this specific formation, what good would it do to hang it under the
wings? You’d lose the stealth,” the officer said.
The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, refused to specify which missiles
were used in the initial attack on the Iranian command-and-control
trailer, but multiple sources point to the Israeli SPICE, an autonomous,
all-weather, precision-attack weapon that the Air Force is
well-practiced in delivering at standoff range.
In conjecture officially denied by Conricus, the IDF spokesman, one
officer suggested Washington may have discouraged or even vetoed
Israel’s use of the F-35 at this point in the multinational program out
of concern that Russian and Iranian specialists in Syria could gather
information on its radar-evading capability and other characteristics.
“That would be highly unlikely and would set a dangerous precedent,” a
former U.S. ambassador to Israel told Defense News. “Once delivered,
these aircraft are wholly owned and operated by the Israelis.”
Retired Israeli Air Force Brig. Gen. Abraham Assael, IAF Reserve Brig.
Gen. Abraham Assael, CEO of the Fisher Institute for Air and Space
Strategic Studies, was the only officer who agreed to be identified by
name. According to the former fighter pilot, the Air Force had no reason
to risk “strategic assets” against what was termed a “strategically
insignificant” target.
“In the past, everything went very well, so why jeopardize something so
valuable and precious in an operation that used to entail no
significant obstacles?” Assael said.
He cited the small number of F-35s in Israel’s possession and the
relatively meager operational experience accrued on the aircraft as
reasons for not including them in the Feb. 10 strike operations.
“If they thought that the targets were so strategically important, I’m
sure they’d consider using them. But they weren’t. So why risk use of
the F-35s at such an early point in their operational maturity?”
“Glitches and mishaps happen,” he added. “So now they’re investigating,
and it could be one of the lessons will be that in this new strategic
environment, we’ll see the F-35 called into action.”
Source: https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2018/02/13/syrian-downing-of-f-16i-begs-question-why-didnt-israel-deploy-f-35s/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Socialflow
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